The Quiet Man

A noisy combination of Communist fronts, from the powerful Students Union down to the Musical Brass Gong Society, has turned Singapore's first 18 months of self-government into a symphony of discords. Through their fronts the illegal Communists have been able to foment riots, call hundreds of strikes, and strongarm those who actively oppose them. Last week, however, just when it seemed that the Communists were on the point of achieving overwhelming ascendancy, a series of surprise moves by a mild little man threw the Red brass into confusion and made the gong beat falter.

Nursing Friends. The man was Lim Yew Hock, for four months Singapore's Chief Minister. The problem he decided to crack had come to a head under his predecessor. Although the Communists made no secret of the fact that they were out to discredit democratic government among the British colony's 900,000 Chinese (80% of the population), the reaction of Singapore's first elected political leader, Chief Minister David Marshall, was to say that the young crypto-Communists were "sick" and needed "nursing." No Communist himself, but an inexperienced politician, spaniel-eyed Lawyer Marshall had his own plan for "nursing" his Communist-dominated electorate: to demand that the British turn over full control of Singapore's security and defense agencies. Last June after the British politely but adamantly refused to do this--at least until the island had achieved stable democratic government--mercurial David Marshall resigned in a pet, went off to improve his mind by travel (to Peking among other places). When Labor Minister Lim Yew Hock, member of the leftist Labor Front, took over the chief ministership, Singaporeans thought they heard the death knell of democracy.

Mild-mannered Lim, a trade-union expert who has studied in both the U.S. and Britain, discomfited his colleagues by letting himself be photographed in the Chief Minister's office wielding a broom and dustpan. He put his security officers in a near panic by wandering around Singapore's tenderloin and dining on 16-c- bowls of noodles while he listened to the plaints of the poor. Lim is a third-generation Malayan-born Chinese, and thus akin to Singapore's Chinese majorities, and his easy way with workers helped him learn their views as well as their woes. While Lim slowly soaked up talk, the Communists intensified their organizational work. Then Singapore's Quiet Man cracked down.

Deporting the Enemy. In a series of crisp executive orders, Lim banned a group of crypto-Communist front organizations (including the Musical Brass Gong Society) and had his security police round up seven of the colony's top China-born Communists for deportation to Red China. When the Communists called on 5,000 students to make a mass protest, Lim banned the Students Union, forbade the formation of another. Next day the Communists ordered a strike of factory and shopworkers which would paralyze all major industries, but when the strike came, it amounted only to a token lunchtime walkout.

By week's end Lim Yew Hock's ad hoc procedure had stunned the Communists into sullen if temporary silence. For the first time since achieving self-government, Singapore saw at least the possibility that a sweeter melody may yet be written.

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